The OLPC project is still alive

The One Laptop Per Child program has been in the works for a while now but we have not really heard much from them lately until now. The idea to provide an inexpensive low powered laptop to children in developing countries is very altruistic but perhaps not very realistic. However the project continues and Phoronix had a look at what might just be the final 7.5" prototype. The hardware reflects the price limit of $200, with an Armanda 610 SoC that has a 800MHz ARMv7 Marvell Sheva processor with an onboard 3D engine for light gaming and which is purported to be able to handle 1080p video, there is also 512MB of RAM and the long term storage is handled be a 4GB NAND flash chip.

"Last month at XDC2011 Chicago, I managed to get my hands on what should be the production hardware model of the XO-1.75 laptop that is expected to be released in the coming months by the OLPC project. The low-cost OLPC laptop targeted for students is now ARM-based and consumes very little power."

There are more than 2 million OLPC XOs in the hands of children right now, in dozens of countries. Uruguay was the first to provide XOs to all primary school students, and Peru promises to do so by the end of the year.

XOs cost less than textbooks, so when our Replacing Textbooks program at Sugar Labs, and others like it, succeed in providing digital learning materials under Free Creative Commons licenses (Open Education Resources), we will be able to improve education at lower total cost. There will be no legitimate reason not to, at that point, although we still have to work out teacher training and get electricity and Internet to schools in even the poorest and most remote villages.

Bangladesh is the first country to provide all-Free, all-digital textbooks. Uruguay and South Korea have announced plans to do the same, along with providing computers to all students. See the Doel line of computers from Bangladesh, starting at $130, and the Digital Bangladesh project for nationwide Internet.